The present invention refers to a dental hand instrument with incorporated light source.
The invention refers in particular to a surgical instrument employed by dentists for scaling and removing tartar and plaque from the tooth surface, commonly called a hand instrument, provided with a light source for illuminating the working area in the patient's oral cavity.
The hand instrument is provided with a transducer that serves to vibrate a hooked instrument called a workpiece that provides for removal of tartar from the tooth surface. Said workpiece has a through hole wherefrom a cleaning fluid which aids the cleaning operation on the oral cavity can be discharged.
Although dental surgeries are well lit it can happen that the dentist casts a shadow over the oral cavity with his body, his hand or the instrument itself as he works. This has led to the need to direct a beam of light around the workpiece of the hand instrument.
Different types of hand instruments are currently known to the art. All the known hand instruments use a separate power supply from that of the transducer of the hand instrument for their light sources.
In fact, because of the need to have a light source that gives a high luminous energy the hand instruments according to the known art use iodine filament lamps.
According to current health regulations, hand instruments must be able to be autoclaved, that is they must be periodically washed and sterilized in an autoclave at high temperatures. Said iodine filament lamps cannot withstand these extremely high temperatures and therefore they must be placed outside the hand instrument, in special separate connectors. Moreover, the possibility of inserting said lamps in the body of the hand instrument has not been considered thus far, both because of their large size which would considerably compromise the manageability of the instrument and because the life of said lamps is very short and therefore they must be positioned in a housing that is readily accessible to the user to facilitate replacement.
Said hand instruments according to the prior art have various drawbacks.
In fact, the use of a separate power supply and external connectors for the light source results in a very bulky instrument with poor versatility because special circuitry must be used for the lamps.
The white light coming from the filament lamps is used only for illumination and in addition presents a further problem. In fact during the cleaning operation said light, entering into contact with the splashes of cleaning fluid coming from the hole in the workpiece, causes misting which prevents clear visibility.
The object of the invention is to eliminate these drawbacks at the same time providing a hand instrument that is simple to make.
This object is reached according to the invention with the characteristics listed in claim 1.
Preferred embodiments of the invention emerge from the dependent claims.
In the hand instrument according to the invention the power supply for the light sources is provided by the same power supply as for the transducer of the hand instrument. With this expedient even high-efficiency LEDs and laser diodes can be used as light sources. In fact LEDs have a good resistance to high temperatures and can withstand the autoclave sterilization process without being damaged.
LEDs also have a very long life compared to lamps and do not need to be replaced for long periods, therefore they can be made integral with the body of the hand instrument and the same power supply as for the hand instrument transducer can be used for the LEDS. For the aforementioned reasons a single connector can be used that is coupled with a mating connector connected to the external supply cable. In this manner there is a considerable reduction in the size of the instrument, a saving in circuitry because further connectors are not used and better versatility since said configuration can also be used for other types of compatible instruments.
Moreover, high-efficiency LEDs which transmit a blue light for diagnostic purposes can be used advantageously.
To overcome the problem of illumination of the oral cavity a mixture of light beams of a plurality of LEDs that emit at different frequencies can be employed in order to be able, through the known RGB combination method, to obtain a white light that allows optimal visibility of the oral cavity without the problem of misting.
Further characteristics of the invention will be made clearer by the detailed description that follows, referring to a purely exemplary and therefore non-limiting embodiment thereof, illustrated in the appended drawings.